Worlds of Differences
by Idunn
Summary: Hermione leaves home to live on her own because of a difference in opinions. Her parents do not like the Wizarding World, and Hermione finds that she, in return, does not even understand her old Muggle World either. OneShot.


As Hermione looked back at her parents from the doorway, she felt, for the first time, utterly, and truly, alone. She was moving away from home, not on the good terms that she would have liked, but there was nothing she could change about it. She had never realized it before, how different the Wizarding World and the Muggle World were. And that there was a reason why they were referred to as two different worlds. She was a child of both worlds. Brought up in both of them, by the teachers at Hogwarts during winter, and by her parents at home during the holidays. How could she not notice the difference in these peoples' thinking? Maybe because she was always with one foot in the other world. But should that not help her to understand, rather than blind her so? She knew both Muggle and Wizarding ways. Or so she had thought until her parents had made it clear that they did not approve of her way of thinking. And they had had a big fight about it. It had hurt so much, that summer. And her seventh and last year at Hogwarts had been horrible. There was the war going on in her wizarding world, that her parents could not fully understand, and there was the war at home, that her friends could not understand. Ron came from a full-fledged magical family, and Harry didn't need his relatives' approval of himself or his beliefs. He was on bad terms with his relatives from the very beginning, so it didn't hurt him to hear his aunt's and uncle's angry voices as it had hurt her to hear her parents' resentments. 

But now Harry was gone. He had died, facing Voldemort, during the graduation ceremony at the end of their seventh year. The ceremony was never completed, and the class of '97 had only a few students that got their diploma that day. The others had had to get it by owl a full three months later. The caos around Voldemort being defeted, Harry Potter, the Boy-who-lived-only-once, as some tactless reporter had put it, being killed in the process, and the Minister of Magic, Scrimgeour, being critically hurt, was of too much importance for anyone to care weather the students Hogwarts became graduates or not. In all honesty, the students hadn't cared either, they, too, had other things on their mind. So Hermione Granger didn't become a graduate from Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry until October that year. The same day, she and Ron had officially broken up.

She and Ron had been an item since around Christmas that eventful seventh year. She had gotten her first kiss on Christmas Day, but nothing further happend for a week, other than they always sat together, and hands touching here and there more often, and much more gazing into each other eyes. Until Ginny had finally given up on them and announced it for them, that the two of them were a couple, and told them to start behaving correctly like one.  
And thus, in the course of one year, Hermione had lost her best friend, her boyfriend, and her family. When she and Ron had broken up, they did not part as friends. Ginny could not stand being between the two of them, and, living under the same roof as her brother, took his side and lost touch with Hermione. With Harry gone, Hermione had no friends left. After finishing school, students lose touch with each other, that is a simple fact of life, and Hermione never had any close friends outside of Hogwarts.

And then there was the war at home. She never realized it before her summer before her seventh year, after her sixth, how detached she was from her family. Not only did she go to a boarding school, which meant that she hardly ever met anyone related to her, but during these months of school, she lived in a completely different world. And it was difficult to keep it secret when she went home for summer vacation, and met her aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. They knew she was smart, they knew she did exceptionally well in school, and they asked about it. The problem was, she could not answer questions like "What books do they make you read in English?", "What did you study in history this winter?", and "I live in around these parts, maybe I can come visit you at school some time?". Not when the answers were "They don't teach English at my school", "I learned about hob-goblins and giants in mainland Europe, and kappas in Japan", and "No, I'm sorry, you cannot pay me a visit because Muggles like you cannot even see Hogwarts, and if you came too close, magical wards around it would make you feel like you had to be somewhere else, and you would leave right away". So her answers about school were shady, and never satisfied anyone, and she knew they thought she was a bit strange. Her cousins that were around her age especially thought she was strange. She never knew of any latest trends going on in music or fashion, and she never followed any television show, at any time. She tried explaning to them that there was no televistion at her school, and that the students of Hogwarts had to wear school uniforms every day, but her cousins argued that they too, had to wear school uniforms, but still they knew that pants like that, were out of the question. Allright, so she never wore the pants again, but what could she do more? She didn't know anyone from outside school, she didn't have any friends in the Muggle World. Having left it at such a young age, her few friends didn't have it in them to write letters, and, Hermione thought, whereto would they have adressed the letters? She couldn't have told them about her being a witch, how could she have explaned it to them, and their parents, that they had to sent each letter by owl? And where would they have gotten an owl? Even her own parents hardly wrote except when she wrote to them first, because getting to a magical post-office was very complicated for Muggles. So she had lost almost all contact with the Muggle World when she left for Hogwarts. She had tried to read the Muggle newspapers too, and not only the Daily Prophet, but being significally more involved in the politics of the Wizarding World, she fell behind in her Muggle newspaper-reading, until she stopped altogether.

She didn't start reading again until the summer before her seventh, and last, year, after her sixth. When it became clear for her that she truly did not understand the Muggle World, her world, as well as she thought she did. The world that she kept standing up for against Malfoy, why was it so lenient with criminals? The Muggle World, the world that she came from, how come the clothing it's people wore was so crude, and vulgar? When she had asked these questions to her parents, they were shocked, and it was it was her third year all over again, when she had told them that Sirius Black had been put into Azkaban without trial, because the evidence was clear against him. And her fourth year, when she had had to explain why Crouch Jr. could not testify, because his soul had been taken away from him. And when Azkaban prison was brought up, her parents recoiled at the horror of the Dementors and what they did to the prisoners there. While Hermione herself had thought it horrible at first, the idea had grown on her and she now tought of it as completely normal, and a fully acceptable punishment, that if a student used magic out of school, before his or her coming of age, that she would be put into Azkaban, where Dementors would make her relive the morst horrible moments of her life, and put her through depression for a while. Her parent did not agree. And that was what they fought about. Hermione thought the Muggle World government and society was soft, and weak. While she knew that the Wizarding government, the Ministry of Magic was corrupted, she supported the system. Mr. and Mrs. Granger did not like the idea of their daughter supporting such a system that wanted every little mishap become a criminal act and the criminals tortured. "They're not being tortured!" Hermione argued, "If they know what's waiting for them in Azkaban, and don't want it, they shouldn't break the law," she said, "They know what to expect". In the end both sides had accepted that they did not, and would not, understand or like the other world's government, society or way of thinking. It broke Hermione's heart, and her parents had wept when they had all decided together that it would be best for all of them, if Hermione would move to live on her own. In her own world.

Her own world. From now on, they didn't even live in the same world anymore. Sure, they still lived in the same country, and no passports were needed, or flight ticikets to be bought for them to see each other, but the cultural gap between them was greater than between the UK and other Europe countries or the US ever would be. And she was so alone. No Harry or Ron to comfort her, to be at her side while she cried over her bad relationship with her parents, and whole family. And no Ginny or Mum to offer her a shoulder to cry on because of her lost friends, whom she still missed. And no Dad to turn to when her mother wasn't there for her. She was alone. She was of two worlds, and still she was alone. Alone.


End file.
